ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Kathleen Willey testified yesterday that President Clinton’s lawyer pressured her not to answer questions in the Paula Jones case – and she felt it was a threat “from the president.”

Willey, the ex-White House volunteer who claims Clinton groped her near the Oval Office in 1993, said lawyer Bob Bennett told her last year she should take the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions from Jones’ lawyers.

“He kept badgering me. He wanted to know about what happened in the Oval Office,” Willey said.

“I felt that it was a threat coming from the president.”

Willey said Bennett also asked her to sign an affidavit denying that Clinton ever groped her. She said she instead signed an affidavit stating that she had nothing relevant to offer Jones’ lawyers. Bennett didn’t return a phone call seeking comment.

Willey made the claims in her second day of testimony in the trial of Julie Hiatt Steele, a former friend who has been charged with obstruction of justice and lying to federal investigators.

Sexgate prober Kenneth Starr is prosecuting Steele in Alexandria, Va., federal court, and Willey has been called as his key witness.

Willey claims that when she went to see Clinton about a paying job in the White House, he responded with an unwanted sexual advance.

Willey claims she told Steele about the alleged incident right after it occurred. In 1997, Steele told a Newsweek reporter about the incident.

But when Steele changed her story last year – claiming that she lied for the Newsweek reporter at Willey’s request – Starr charged her with lying and obstruction.

Steele’s lawyers yesterday attacked Willey’s story and tried to portray her as a liar. They noted that she had more than 60 memory lapses in her deposition in the Jones case.

Steele’s lawyers asked Willey how she came to remember so many previously forgotten details once she was questioned by Starr’s prosecutors.

Willey said she was flustered during the Jones deposition because two days earlier, she’d been approached in her neighborhood by a menacing man, who asked her specific questions about her missing cat, her punctured car tires and her children.